As for Fortune and As for Fame
by Proverbial Pumpkin
Summary: An unlikely performance leads to two revelations about Tohma. Low-key K/Tohma and backstory.


**And As For Fortune and As For Fame**

K sat at the end of row GG, surrounded by empty seats in a cavernous arena and feeling more like a Nittle Grasper groupie than the manager for a rival band. Fifty yards ahead, Tohma, Ryuichi, and Noriko were circled around a sound crew member and an interpreter on stage. The lights were up, dimming and flickering as someone tested the concert settings from behind an unseen tech box. An alarm chirped momentarily from an illuminated emergency _SALIDA_ sign, before turning immediately off. Someone with a headset walked the length of the stage, taping set lists in front of the synthesizer on the left, the keyboard on the right, and Ryuichi's feedback speaker. Three hours until show time. Where was the last minute panic? The arguing over the song list, the wardrobe adjustments? K knew, of course. This was what it was like to tour with seasoned professionals.

He felt about as useful as a butter knife and he was enjoying it, sauntering up the empty aisle to the stage. There was no professional reason for him to be there; that was a fact. But when the president invites you to join Nittle Grasper for the last several dates of a mini-tour concluding in São Paulo, and doesn't reject your demand for a week's South American vacation at the end of it – at least not outright – well, you pack a swimsuit and you meet him in Mexico City.

K had been to the city, to the hotel and the venue once before during Ryuichi's solo stint. As he recalled, it hadn't been a great investment: less than stellar profits and no real reason to return. But Tohma must know something he didn't because here they all were. No one remarked on the arrival of Bad Luck's manager; Ryuichi waved his stuffed rabbit over his head in his direction and Noriko waved a dismissive hand. K may not belong there, but he was part of the NG furniture, ingrained enough that he could show up halfway around the world to a Grasper concert and not raise eyebrows. Tohma gave him a curt, professional nod – as if they wouldn't head back to the hotel together in six hours – and proceeded with preparations.

K hadn't seen him in two weeks; he would have preferred a longer, dirtier hello in Tohma's hotel room, but Nittle Grasper had a job to do. He vaulted over what would become a security barrier and went onstage. He knelt by the main feedback speaker, expecting to see the usual numbers on the set list taped in place. And he did, plus a few of Ryuichi's solo pieces. Tohma wouldn't let those three years go to waste. A few songs from last album… and then a head-scratcher. Two thirds down the list, their outfit change filler had been crossed out and replaced with _Seguchi – mic 1._ K blinked at the line for a moment. Tohma, performing alone? Performing alone with a mic? That didn't happen.

Tohma was micromanaging something in the vicinity of the synthesizer. Noriko walked off, looking affectionately exasperated. K took care not to look too interested in the stretch of Tohma's slacks when he bent down to check the balance of the synth stand, laying over a wire-thin cord. "After all these years, she's got to wonder how you can possibly _not_ trust her to set up her own instrument," K observed from behind.

The president glanced over his shoulder at his voice and snorted, turning back to the instrument. "She almost brought the whole set up down in Monterrey. I don't care what she thinks."

K smiled at his back, and then hesitated. "So on another note… Tohma, can you sing?"

"A little," he answered, paying no real attention. "Perhaps you've heard of my band."

"I don't mean backing up Ryuichi. I'm wondering why you're on the set list using the lead mic."

"Why?" Tohma straightened then, side-eyeing him.

"Why what?"

"Why should you care?" he said, as though K had something to gain, something he didn't trust.

"Alright, I know you don't think I flew seven thousand miles to spy on your band. So stop looking at me like I'm about to steal something. It just seems odd considering you never even sang on your national tour. And considering I've been in your house for ten months and never once –"

"Quiet! Are you crazy?" Tohma hissed. Someone called for him on the main floor, some tech or another, and he shot K a final disgusted look before stalking to the edge of the stage in a flourish of cotton silk and indignation.

* * *

The concert hadn't sold out, but, looking around at the crowd from the far edge of the security barrier, K supposed Tohma had known it wouldn't. Nittle Grasper had a weak foothold in Latin America at best. Once they'd committed to the tour, the best approach was to book full-sized arenas, sell tickets at three-fourths the average price, publicize like crazy, and make sure the audience and any media present went away impressed. Now wasn't the time to book small venues and risk turning people away. This sports venue, with its six rows of empty seats up at the top and its slowly warming crowd on the floor, was an investment.

The first half of the concert was a carbon copy of their show in Japan, except that Ryuichi spoke between songs in his passable English. K wondered how it had gone over in Los Angeles and Monterrey; the crowd here was so… well, foreign, difficult to read. Almost polite. K cringed watching Ryuichi exhaust himself to keep the energy level up. It had been years since he'd performed for an audience who couldn't sing along, who didn't know their Japanese lyrics by heart. Why on earth _were_ they touring here? When Ryuichi slipped off-stage with Noriko for a practiced outfit change, K was relieved for him.

If the delicate sheen of sweat over his ears were any indication, Tohma could have used the break too. But he was left alone on stage in his black and red concert outfit, fiddling slightly with Ryuichi's abandoned microphone stand. He lowered the head, gestured something affirmative to a crew member, carried it to the side of the stage… and set it down in front of his keyboard. The lights morphed into a single white spotlight on Tohma, softened by deep gold gels on the rest of the stage.

K had never seen a lead mic in front of the keyboard set-up; it broke from a years-long routine. A few whoops went up in the audience – they had at least a few devoted fans everywhere – but for the most part, the crowd had levelled at a patient murmur. They didn't know what was happening was special. At least, not until Tohma, without preamble, began to play a slow Latin ostinato, something utterly diametric from anything Nittle Grasper – hell, any of NG – had ever recorded.

After a few moments the audience quieted, falling into rapt attention. K looked from the arena, to the wall-sized LED screen of Tohma, to Tohma himself not ten yards away. He finished eight bars, maybe twelve, of introduction in a minor key K couldn't identify. Then the sound died off in the speakers and the audience waited expectantly, craning around one another… And Tohma opened his mouth to sing.

 _Gracias - a la vida_

The end of the word was drowned in the crowd's surprise and approval. K blinked.

 _Que me ha dado tanto_

The energy in the seats was tangible now. Spanish! But why? It wasn't a language Tohma knew, not at all. Surely the whole song couldn't be…

 _Me ha dado el sonido y el abecedario_

In fourteen bars, Nittle Grasper had captured the attention of a new audience. Tohma's words were heavily accented, but confident. It was extraordinary. The song, whatever it was, featured wide chord sets in Tohma's left hand that just barely anchored its haunting melody, slow and intricate. Tohma's voice stunned, unpracticed but controlled, slightly but unnervingly deeper than his soft spoken words. Uncharacteristically, Tohma's eyes were on his hands; he had to focus on the uninvolved chords on an instrument he'd played his whole life. Meanwhile the words came out naturally. It made no sense.

Nevermind the language – K would get to the bottom of that – but had he really never heard Tohma sing before today? It was an altogether unexpected delivery – as though Tohma had secretly harbored that lower half-register in his voice, unused in the conference room and the production studio. As though those mournful lyrics sat on a precarious plane, unleveled ever so slightly in his tilted accent. Somehow, the man was more talented than even K had known. The modest crowd in Mexico City whistled for him, for his tribute to them, for the effort. Men and women had their cell phones out; this would be on the internet soon. In the back of his mind K supposed he'd contact Sakano, make sure they had some behind-the-scenes video or an interview to put out soon. If Nittle Grasper got any real attention for this (really, how long had Tohma had this up his sleeve?) then Bad Luck would need to answer it.

Tohma was nearly finished; on the giant screen behind him, a rare close-up of Tohma's face gave the audience – this obscure audience, who hadn't even paid regular prices – a glimpse of something not even Tokyo had seen. A simple unadorned Nittle Grasper performance, a performance grounded, as far as K could tell, in humility. Or was it an act? A respite before the pulsing lights of the finale, a calculated foil to Ryuichi, who strutted and sang larger than life? Tohma's eyes glanced up only moments at a time, to gauge the crowd, to seek reassurance in the watch Noriko and Ryuichi off-stage, to find K… who knew.

 _Cuando miro el fondo du tus ojos claros_

Mexico City couldn't wait for the end of the final verse to whistle for Tohma, to clap and shout.

 _Gracias a la vida…_

They loved him.

… _que me ha dado tanto_

Tohma gave a slight nod of appreciation when he finished, and then his eyes were off-stage, on his bandmates. The audience were on their feet, and with timing that only comes from experience, Ryuichi and Noriko rushed on stage to capitalize on it. No sooner had Tohma finished than the last leg of the concert, the bright outfits and thumping bass, began.

K smiled to himself, crossing his arms and leaning back against the security barrier. Ryuichi was the star again, the pyrotechnics would be back up before long. And because of Tohma, it would work. K straightened, watched the band for another moment, slipped a hand in one pocket, and headed backstage.

* * *

The breakdown crew milled about as K waited for Tohma behind the stage. He arrived between Ryuichi and Noriko, helping Ryuichi out of a white top that was drenched skin-tight with sweat. In any other circumstances K would have hurled them bodily apart, but this was routine. When any band finished two and a half hours under the stage lights, they had a right to get out of their performance clothes and re-hydrate as fast as humanly possible. It was the way of things.

K hung in a side hallway in the back of the arena for a while with a tepid orange soda, while Tohma took care of business and evaded sharing a car back to the hotel with Ryuichi and Noriko. There was no point in being too obvious. At length Tohma appeared at the end of the corridor, showered and tired-looking, looking for K. He wore plain black slacks and his cotton silk shirt had a few soft wrinkles. It was almost 2 in the morning. But he smiled. "Please tell me you rented a car."

"I certainly did. Ready to go?" K leaned down and kissed below Tohma's jawline, before they set down the main hallway again.

"Oh!" Tohma said, stopping in place. "Your flight. I forgot. How was it?"

K shrugged and guided him along. The sooner they got out of here, the sooner they slept. "It was fine. Long. More importantly," he said, as he raised a hand to the last of the crew, "when were you going to tell me you fucking _sing_?"

"Oh. I don't," Tohma said, almost defensively. They made their way through the building. "I just… can. When it's useful. You should have seen us struggle through Monterrey two nights ago. They don't care much about Nittle Grasper here, or at least they weren't going to if we only sang at them in Japanese and English. I had to make this concert more worth their while. And ours."

K held a venue door open for him, soda in the other hand, and let Tohma pass out into the thinned ranks of vehicles in the cordoned parking lot. A mild wind blew across Tohma's bangs, his hair lightening to the usual blond as it dried. To the south of the arena rose the city skyscrapers – their hotel was somewhere among them. "Were you going to tell me you know a third language?" K asked.

"I don't," Tohma insisted again. "I know that song."

"How?"

He didn't respond immediately, but looked over his shoulder once, making sure no one was in earshot. The audience was gone; the crew was still inside. "It's a popular song over here, or it used to be. My mother sang it, before... well. Before."

"I thought your mother was a sous chef in Osaka," K said, and tested his forgotten soda – flat.

For a moment there was only the sound of their footsteps as they approached the car, and the whir of an unfamiliar outer city around them. Tohma so rarely volunteered information to K about his life before NG, nevermind his childhood. "She was." His voice was tight. "But _her_ mother was a prostitute in Buenos Aires."

Orange soda spewed within inches of their rental Corolla. "I'm sorry, what?" K said, staring at him.

"Her mother was a – "

"I heard you. But you never said... so you're part… Argentinean?"

Tohma cut him a look as he waited for K to unlock the car and got in. "Why do you say it like that? Anyway, only technically. I only ever met my grandmother once, when we couldn't reach her from Tokyo to tell her my mother had died. So I flew in. That was – " Suddenly Tohma seemed to realize he was in uncomfortable waters. "… A fun conversation," he finished, looking at the lane leading to the main road, in the mirrors, anywhere other than at K.

K, on the other hand, couldn't keep from stealing a long look at him, even as he drove. He couldn't believe it, couldn't help it, couldn't keep his eyes from scanning over the pink tips of Tohma's ears, the lines of his eyebrows, his mouth – should he have detected, somehow, that Tohma had western blood in him, a thin and, for reasons he wouldn't press, _secret_ link to another hemisphere and another language? K would have guessed just about anywhere else. He could imagine Tohma descendent of a stoic valley people, maybe somewhere with frost on the grass year-round. But not Argentina.

"Stop staring at me," Tohma commanded. He'd be in a sharp mood now; after all these months, K knew something about Tohma the magazines didn't.

"Sorry," he grinned. "We can talk about something else. Like how pissed Japan's going to be you didn't sing on your national tour last year. You've been holding out on them."

"It was nothing spectacular," Tohma answered. "I told security to go easy on the bootleggers for that segment, because we could use the publicity. But I can't imagine it will generate much interest."

"Think again. I checked. It was circulating here, in Mexico I mean, before the rest of the concert was even over. The U.S. too, Argentina, Spain."

"Hm." Tohma seemed to pause then, and his hands seemed to miss the bowler hat that he, for once, had foregone. "So was it – that is, what did you think? Of…"

K pulled onto a highway. "Of your singing?"

Tohma looked forward into the road a moment, as though he might rescind the question. Then he nodded.

K's face split into a grin. "I can't pretend it's much good for me when Nittle Grasper ups your game out the blue. Fujisaki's going to lose the will to live when he sees it."

The prospect didn't seem to concern Tohma terribly; he rested his head against the passenger window and closed his eyes. "Hm."

"That aside…" K thought a moment, rolling the window down and letting in Mexico City as they approached the skyscrapers to the south. Tohma opened his eyes again and looked at him patiently.

"That aside, Tohma, I could have listened to you on a non-stop loop."

 **The end.**

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Another one down! Reviews welcome. I have it in my head that Tohma is a musical genius and can do pretty much anything. I also got it in my head that he's the result of a line of women who do what they have to do to make things work, but then I had to think of a reason why the details of his boss maternal line would have been kept on the down low. I researched sex work and stigma in 20th c. Argentina (common), Japanese Argentines (a growing population in Buenos Aires by the 1960s), and Argentinean Japanese (less common), to make sure these details made at least some sense. I'm dying to write more Tohma back story!


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